Pokémon Soulgold
The whole of Johto rebuilt on the modern pokeemerald-expansion engine, stretched well past its usual borders, where every Pokémon carries permanent innates on top of its ability.
More about the game
Soulgold is a Johto game built on the pokeemerald-expansion engine by rahtak, growing out of an unofficial expansion port of Heart & Soul and not affiliated with the official Heart & Soul 2.0. It keeps the shape of a traditional run — eight Johto gyms, the Rocket takeover, the Elite Four — and widens almost everything around it: a redrawn Johto with areas the original games never had, nine starters, every Mega Evolution reachable through type-generic stones, Hidden Grottos that reset daily, boss versions of legendary fights that guarantee the catch once beaten, and a Title Defense system so the champion at the end of the League is not always the same one. The deepest change is to battling itself: alongside its ordinary ability, every Pokémon carries innates that are permanently active, so a team read without them looks far easier than it plays. Difficulty and level caps are settings rather than separate patches.
What's different, point by point
- The whole of Johto on the modern pokeemerald-expansion engine, with a fresh tileset and areas well beyond the region's usual borders
- Permanent innates on top of each Pokémon's ordinary ability: 959 of the 959 species in the game carry at least one
- A Hard setting and optional level caps chosen in game rather than as separate patches; 83 fights carry a separate Hard team
- Nine starters, and every Mega Evolution reachable through type-generic stones
- Hidden Grottos that reset daily, boss versions of legendary fights that guarantee the catch, and a Title Defense system at the end of the League
- 132 wild tables with separate night encounters where the game has them, 959 Pokémon, 848 moves and 433 trainer fights
rahtak
This guide is built from rahtak's own documentation. The game, the ideas and the work are theirs — the site just makes the numbers searchable. Play it from the official page, and send them the feedback and the thanks.
What this guide covers
Every guide here is built from the game's own documentation. Where a ROM hack changed something but never published the numbers, this says so rather than quietly filling the gap with the original game's — which would be worse than leaving it out.
| Section | Source | |
|---|---|---|
| Wild Pokémon by area | From the game itself | Every wild table in the game's documentation, for every map that has one, with night tables listed separately where they exist. |
| Encounter rates | From the game itself | Percentages are the game's own per-species rates, added together where a species fills more than one slot. |
| Wild levels | From the game itself | Every level range is the game's own. |
| Stats, abilities and movesets | From the game itself | Base stats, types, abilities, innates, level-up learnset, TM/HM and tutor compatibility and evolution method for all 959 species and forms in the game. |
| TM and HM compatibility | From the game itself | The game's own 110 TMs and HMs, with per-species compatibility. |
| Where TMs are found | From the game itself | Where each machine is found, from the game's own documentation; machines the documentation places nowhere say so rather than being guessed. |
| Trainer and boss teams | From the game itself | Every trainer in the documentation, with parties, levels, held items, abilities, natures, innates and movesets, and the Hard team where a fight has one. |
Credits
- Soulgold: rahtak
- The game's own documentation, which every number in this guide is read from: the Soulgold team
- Source repository: eemeliri/soulgold on GitHub
- Heart & Soul, which this game grew out of (this is not the official Heart & Soul 2.0): HnS Dev Team
- Porting most of Heart & Soul to the expansion: smithk200
- Engine base and support: RHH and the pokeemerald-expansion dev team
- The original Emerald decompilation: Pret and everyone involved
- Art, code and features contributed by many others: the full list is in the game's own credits
- Sprites via PokéAPI; base move and TM data from PokéAPI and Bulbapedia.
Reading the tables
SourceEvery table here is read from the documentation the Soulgold team generate from their own game and publish at eemeliri.github.io/soulgold: species, learnsets, TM and tutor compatibility, evolutions, wild tables, the machine list with its locations, item locations, and trainer rosters with the maps they stand on.
InnatesAlongside the ability a Pokémon has, it carries **innates** that are always active, all at once. They are on every species page and under every Pokémon on a trainer's team. 959 of the 959 species in the game have at least one.
AbilitiesBecause an official ability can be an innate here rather than the ability slot, the "compared with the official games" block on a species page leaves abilities out. Stats and types are still compared.
ModesDifficulty is an in-game setting. Most trainers have one team; 83 fights carry a separate Hard roster and say so on the page. Level caps are a separate option and are not reflected in the levels shown, which are the rosters' own.
DaynightSome maps have a separate night table. Where one exists it is a method of its own on that area's page, listed under the day table, rather than a second copy of the area.
Tms_FormsTM, HM and tutor compatibility is held against a species' dex number, which a form shares with the Pokémon it is a form of, so a form's page shows the base species' machine list.
FloetteFour Floette colour forms appear in wild tables but are missing from the species listing the documentation publishes, so there are no stats to show for them. They are left in the tables where the game puts them, named by their form, and have no page of their own.
FormsMega, regional and other forms share their base species' printed name in game, so they are listed here as "Venusaur (Mega)", "Typhlosion (Hisui)" and so on. The bracket is this site's; the game's own form constant is what it is taken from.
LevelsWild levels and trainer levels are the game's own, read from its documentation. They do not account for the optional level caps.
ProgressThe stage list follows Johto's badge order, which this game keeps. The game publishes no chapter list of its own, so the areas it adds are placed at the stage matching the levels the game itself uses in them; treat a stage as "about when you get here", not a locked door.
TrainersEvery trainer in the documentation, with the party, levels, held items, abilities, natures and movesets it records, and the maps the game places them on. A trainer standing on more than one map says so.